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1 he Empire of Cotton 



• • • 

• • • 



Copyright 1914 

By C. D. RIVERS 

Summerville, Georgia 






Price: 25 Cents Silver. 



The Empire of Cotton 



• • t 

• • # 



Copyright 1914 

By C. D. RIVERS 

Summerville, Georgia 



• • 1 

O 9 



Price: 25 Cents Silver. 






THE UNION LABEL 
To my regret could not appear on 
this edition, because it had to be 
printed in my home town, in the only 
little print shop of the place, where 
the owner and his family do all the 
work, and where no union has ever 
attempted to organize. 



% 0, VV" 
CI.A391025 



I 

Before going into the main subject, 
indicated by the title of this book, 1 
wish to lay down some definitions, so 
that the reader will be able to under- 
stand some terms, I shall use, and 
which might otherwise appear to be 
loosely chosen and of uncertain 
'meaning. 

First I wish to define the term val- 
ue, as I shall use it in the pages fol- 
lowing. Value is the quality of being 
available or ready for human con- 
sumption or enjoyment, and is always 
imparted to the object, which contains 
it, by more or less of human skill and 
human musclar efforts. 

As I sit at this desk I look through 
the window upon a lake, teeming with 
fishes of all kind. These fishes make 
a delicious and substantial addition 
to the bill of fare, when they come 
to the table. There is the lake, where 
all sorts of food for them abounds, 
nature has already spawned, reared 
and fattened the fishes, but nature 
alone will never bring them to the 
table, and though they flourish there, 
and flash like light through the clear 
waters of the lake, without more, 
they have no value for human beings. 
For men, the value of these fishes 
only begins to be realized, when they 
come to their mouths, where they 
can be masticated and assimilated, 
and nothing but human labor of mind 
and muscle can bring them to that 
situation, from which it follows that 
notwithstanding the fishes grew there 
in the lake, with no aid from any 



savR from nature, their value de- 
pends wholly upon whatever labor, 
much or little, may be required to 
make them available for human use. 
VALUE, IS THEREFORE, BUT AN- 
OTHER NAME FOR THE QUANTITY 
OF HUMAN LABOR, WHICH IS UP- 
ON AN AVERAGE REQUIRED TO 
MAKE THE OBJECT SAID TO CON- 
TAIN THE VALUE, AVAILABLE OR 
.READY FOR HUMAN USE. And of 
course an object which could not be 
made useful can not have value im- 
parted to it, by human labor expend- 
ed upon it. 

I did not dig the lake, nor sow it 
with the seed from which the fishes 
grew. The Creator did both. The 
lake was there before I was born, 
and so were the fishes in it, and the 
lake will be there with the fishes in 
it, long after I am dead. But I have 
a yard full of blood hounds and a 
Winchester rifle stands where I can 
grasp it, and sweep that lake *at will 
from this window, and my dogs are 
always sniffing the air, ready to tear 
away at any fisher coming there a- 
gainst my will. Smith and Jones 
have no lake. The Creator evidently 
forgot them when he was making 
lakes and the ground that goes 
round lakes, but he did not forget to 
make them, and to put hunger with 
sharp fangs in their bowels,, and they 
are before me just now, with hats off 
asking me to let them catch fish 
in the lake for dinner, as they have 
no lakes in which to fish, and if 
they did have, they have no_ land. 



upon which to stand and eat them 
after catching th3 fish. This is the 
first time that two of them have/ 
come to me at once to fish, and a 
new idea is born to me in conse- 
quence. The fish in that lake are so 
prolific and the food supply so good, 
that every day, enough of the grown 
ones could be taken out to feed 
many families like my own or like 
Jones or Smith's. But it long since 
got monotonous for me to sit there 
every day catching fish for my own 
table, and for a long time, I have 
been letting whoever had no lake, 
and wanted fish, to catch fish for 
himself and me at the same time, and 
I sat here with my rifle to see that 
nobody else fished any other way in 
my lake. But what is the use of 
owning the face of the deep and the 
lands around, if one has to work for 
one's living just as before, and is 
not guarding my lake, as monotonous 
as going there every day to fish? So 
I now make up my mind to retire 
both from the toil of fishing in the 
lake, and from the bother of guard- 
ing those who do fish in it, and of 
compelling them to divide their catch 
with me. I tell Smith that he can 
fish in the lake, and keep every fifth 
fish he catches, and give the others 
to me. I tell Jones, that since such 
fellows as he and Smith have become 
so plentiful in this part of the world, 
my lake has become more valuable, to 
me, and I have grown too rich either 
to fish or boss the fishermen. I tell 
him to take charge of the gun and 



the blood hounds, and to see to 
it that Smith never eats a fish, until 
he has first set aside four for me, 
and I agree to give Jones one of the 
four that falls to me out of every five 
caught by Smith. So Smith begins 
to catch fishes for me, and Jones 
gets busy with the rifle and the 

bloodhounds tracking Smith about, 
and holding him up with the gun, to 
make him divide every five fishes he 
catches. 

THEREON THE VALUE OF THE 
FISHES CAUGHT BEGINS TO BE 
DIVIDED INTO TWO SHARES OR 
IF WE EXPRESS THE VALUE IN 
MONEY, WE W T OULD SAY THAT 
THE VAULE GIVEN TO THE FISH- 
ES BY THE SKILL AND MUSCLE) 
POWER OF SMITH IS BEING DI- 
VIDE INTO TWO FUNDS. Smith 
gets one of these shares or funds, 
and we may call his share WAGES. 
I get the other share, that is the 
four fishes out of every five, and I 
get them because I have the power 
of life and death, the control of the 
gun and dogs, which I am allowed 
by the consent or sufferance of men, 
to use on or about that lake against 
any person denying my claims upon 
it. 

Therefore we may call my share 
RENT, as it is collected upon the 
ownership of a part of the face of 
the earth. 

When I used to catch my own fish 
out of the lake, nobody compelling 
me to divide with them, I got all the 
value, which my labor added to the 



fish. That is, I was at liberty to 
eat them all or to trade them all off 
for other things to be used by me. 

But I do not allow Smith to eat or 
sell all the fish he catches, and he 
does not therefore get all the value, 
which he adds to the fishes, by his 
skill of mind, and bodily efforts, ex- 
pended in catching them. Smith on- 
ly gets to eat or sell one fish out 
of every five he catches, and there- 
fore he gets WAGES, WHICH ARE 
ALWAYS MEANT, BY THE EMPLOY 
ER TO CONTAIN LESS VALUE, 
THAN THE WORKER, WHO RE- 
CEIVES THEM, CREATES. Jones, 
my guard, with the gun and the dog, 
is paid wages, too, but, he does no- 
thing that helps to bring fish out of 
the water to the table, and occupies 
to me what standing armies, state 
mlitias, and sheriff's posses occupy 
in relation to the ruling classes of 
modern states. But I have always 
more fish than I can eat, having 
three left to me, every time Smith 
and Jones have one apiece falling to 
them. 

If Smith and Jones are getting 
enough fish to eat, then I have at 
least two to sell, as a surplus, out 
of every three that fall to me. 

About over the world there are 
other lakes, besides, rivers, streams 
and seas from which other men like 
Jones and Smith catch fish, and com- 
pell each other to divide them with 
men who claim to own the lakes, 
rivers and the lands bordering the 
seas, if not the seas, themselves, 



and therefore there are fish coming 
into the market, which are caught 
under conditions varying in every 
possible degree, from those under 
which mire are caught. In some 
la Ices more .pounds of the same grade 
oi fish can be taken with less la- 
bor than in mine. To customers of 
fish at large, the value of fish, is not 
merely measured by the amount of 
labor which my fisherman has to ex- 
pend in catching a given number of 
pounds but to fish eaters at large, 
fish values, means the amount in 
days or hours or other units of time, 
which the average worker will have 
to expend, not in any given lake, 
stream or sea, but in a mathematical 
average of places where fish can be 
caught. 

HENCE THE SOCIAL VALUE OF 
ANY OBECT IS THE QUANTITY OF 
LABOR POWER MEASURED BY 
DAYS OR OTHER UNITS OF TIME, 
WHICH AN AVERAGE HUMAN 
WORKER UNDER AVERAGE CON- 
DITION WILL HAVE TO EXPEND 
IN ORDER TO BRING THE OBJECT 
TO A * STATE OR CONDITION 
WHERE IT CAN BE USED OR EN- 
JOYED BY HUMAN BEINGS. 

But when the fish eater comes in- 
to the market to buy fish, he does 
not asJ: the dealer how much human 
labor is on the average required to 
bring forth a pound of fish, but he 
wants to know how cheap he can 
get the fish; while the dealer wants 
to kno.v to the contrary how much 
cash he can make th? fish brins:. The 



point where the buyer annd dealer 
at last meet is called PRICE, and 
this point will depend on an aver- 
age of all the times, upon how much 
labor is required on the average to 
catch the fish. But at any actual 
moment other circumstances, besides 
the average labor time required to 
catch a pound of fish, may determine 
how" much the buyer will pay for the 
fish. As every day, I get as many 
fish as I could eat in three days, and 
get them without expending any of 
my labor whatever, when fish become 
very plentiful in the market, owing 
to favorable weather, the introduc- 
tion of improved fishing tackle or 
hard times in other industries driving 
a large number of workers to fish- 
ing, I can afford to sell fish quite 
cheap indeed. But really Smith and 
Jones can not live by fish alone, 
though Smith does nothing but catch 
fish, and Jones does nothing but 
use the dogs and rifle to make Smith 
divide his fish with me. Both Smith 
and Jones have to sell some part 
of the fish left to them, to buy oth- 
er things they need. Now Smith can 
not afford always to keep selling fish 
for a price which will not buy him 
back enough of other articles to keep 
him alive and strong enough to fish 
again tomorrow. Let us say that the 
price has become so low, owing to 
the fact, that I and others have so 
many fish to sell, which we got so 
easily, and can afford to sell so 
cheaply, that Smith begins to find 
that fish as hard as he will, his fifth 



of the daily catch will not sell for 
enough money to buy what he needs 
to keep up his strength of body and 
his health and skill. 

Smith tells me that I ought to give 
him two out of. every five or at least 
a fish and a half out of every five 
he catches, so that he can keep up 
his fishing strength and skill, and 
breed a son to take his place when 
he grows too old to fish himself, 
and a daughter, whom he can swap 
with the father of some other son 
and daughter to get a wife for his 
son, in order to preserve his line in 
the race of fishers. But I never 
have fished on the same terms as 
Smith and if I had, I do no longer 
fish that way, and have lost the feel- 
»ing of one who does, and hence, I 
can not, perhaps I do not wish to, 
understand and believe what Smith 
says. This is a dishonest thing 
Smith has done to me. Here I or 
my ancestors have won the right to 
keep folks from catching fish in this 
lake, the Lord God must have meant 
to make this lake and the fish in it 
lor no other purpose than to save me 
from havirg to work for the com- 
fortable living which I enjoy, if I 
did not fish myself, the lake would 
be worth nothing. In fact Smith's 
calamity, his poverty is my property 
also, the pain in his stomach is 
what makes my lake worth so much. 
But Smith is certainly no longer 
grateful to me and God for furnish- 
ing a lake full of fish for him to 
catch, and I must have a better eye 



kept upon the shiftless, dishonest 
fellow. So I do not raise his WAGES 
but instead 1 begin to pay Jones 
more, say two fish out of every five, 
with orders to watch Smith closer, 
keep the dogs at his heels and the 
rifle at the cock, all the time. 

Jones and I are too much for 
Smith, having both rifle and dogs 
with us, and all the public clapping 
their hands for us to boot. 

Smith fishes on with not quite 
enough food, with not quite enough 
bedding at night or clothing by day, 
with not quite enough shelter and 
warmth against the damp and the 
cold. His children get pale and paler 
Smith stoops more and more, though 
still young. He begins to fail. He 
can not bring the fish as he once 
did, and it looks like that puny boy 
will certainly never be strong enough 
to fish in his father's place. My sup- 
ply of fish failing, and no coaxing 
or driving being sufficient to goad 
the fast failing Smith into bringing 
me more, I make known that I want 
a fisherman, let him come from where 
he will, and he may have two-fifths 
of his catch. 

Perhaps others, having dealt with 
their fishermen, as I have with 
Smith, and having had the same ex- 
perience are making like offers of 
better WAGES, and even this does 
not bringing new men from other in- 
dustries to all the places, for some 
have died of the many ills that fol- 
low where 1ow t wages lead, and the 
labor supply is reduced. So Smith 



gets the benefit of the raise, and be- 
gins to get stronger, if he had not' 
starved before, and his family im- 
proving in health and strength with 
a better food supply, gives promise 
of a succession of workers to follow, 
preserving the usefulness of my lake 
to my successors. 

Smith has been experiencing the 
IRON LAW, WHICH FIXES WAGES, 
WHEREVER THERE IS A LARGE 
LANDLESS POPULATION, OUT OF 
REACH OF FREE OR CHEAP LANE 
Wages are therefore not determined 
by the quantity of product, to which 
the laborer gives value, by his activity 
but WAGES ARE ON THE AVER- 
AGE, SUFFICIENT TO MAINTAIN 
THE WORKER IN SUFFICIENT 
STRENGTH AND SKILL TO KEEP 
AT WORK, AND TO REAR A FAMI- 
LY TO TAKE THE PLACE OF HIM- 
SELF AS A WORKER AND A FA- 
THER, AND OF HIS WIFE AS A 
MOTHER. 

When wages go above this level in 
any industry or in any number of 
them it becomes apparent from the 
display of good clothes, nicer homes 
and politer manners on the part of 
the workers, that wages are above 
the IRON LEVEL, and if there are 
any idle workers of sufficient skill 
and strength, be they women and 
children, babes just out of their 
cradle, they will be called into indus- 
try and wages at a lower rate will 
be given to them, which of coursQ 
will dislodge other workers, who bid 
back in turn at a lower rate against 



those who supplanted them. In fact 
high wages, tends to make the work- 
ing class longer lived, more prolific, 
fewer children die among them, and 
the supply of workers tends to in- 
crease, and this increase itself, when 
it reaches the proper height, by sup- 
plying- surplus workers, begins to 
bring- wages down again. And once 
wages start down unless some other 
accident intervenes they must con- 
tinue to fall until the working class 
has been weakened in purchasing 
power below the safety line, so 
much that mortality and disease 
again gains upon its natural rate of 
increase until the minimum level of 
wages has been reached. 

The system of WAGES in itself, 
affords no other means of deciding 
what the rate of wages shall be, than 
this natural method indicated. 

In the United States, in the past, 
this IRON LAW of Wages has been 
so much modified by other circum- 
stances, that the pendulum has per- 
haps never had a fair chance to sw T ing 
from one extreme to the other, and 
the whole wage class has never yet, 
had by its own sufferings to w r ork 
out the full test of whether wages 
were above or below the IRON LEVEL 
Because for one great reason, until 
very recently there has always been 
somewhere on the continent under the 
American flag large bodies of un- 
settled land, easily accesible to the 
workers of the more crowded regions. 
This very favorable condition to the 
workers has now quite passed, and 



there is little of expansion left to 
prevent the IRON LAW OF WAGES 
FROM WORKING ITS INEXORABLE 
WAY WITH THE WORKING CLASS 
in America, as it has for ages done\ 
in Ear ope. 

When in the primitive ages, I first 
fished in my lake, I had not even 
the rudest tackle nor even the idea 
of any. By very great labor I was 
able now and then to catch one in* 
shallow water with my naked hands. 
My first improvement over that meth- 
od was to kill them with clubs and 
stones, but this method too, was 
very laborious, and I got only a few 
fish for much aching of bones and 
weariness of flesh. When I fished 
with my naked hands, all of my op- 
erations performed with the view of 
having fish for myself and family to 
eat were performed directly, and con- 
sisted of walking from my hut to the 
water, wading in or leaning over, 
and when chance favored, of seizing 
the fish which came in the way. But 
the idea of fishing tackle got into 
my head in the course of ages, and 
after nature had knocked me down 
with innumerable hints, as is her 
way of teaching, and man's way of 
learning. My conduct now became 
complicated, when I desired fish to 
eat. I did not go directly to the wa- 
ter. First I planted hemp, flax, cot- 
ton and other fiber bearing plants, 
cultivated them, gathered the fiber, 
prepared and cleaned it, and at 
length spun it into threads and wove 
it into nets. Still I was not ready; 



to go to the lake. I wanted a boat, 
sails and oars for it, and I needed 
lumber from the forest, and axes and 
saws to shape the lumber. So I went 
away to the mountains and dug the 
iron rocks, smelted them, moulded 
and tempered the metal and formed 
my axes and saws. Then to the for- 
est to cut my lumber and fashion my 
boat. To bring all this down to the 
water, I had to capture and rear and 
domesticate horses and oxen. I 
had to provide pastures and stables 
for them, and grow fields of hay and 
grain to feed them. I had to build 
wagons, and get more metal to iron 
them with, and to build roads and 
bridges for them to pass over be- 
tween the forest and the lakeside. 

At last I had my boat and tackle 
ready, and then I had to learn the 
laws of navigation, water currents 
and air currents, which flow above 
the Lakes and seas. This required 
time, labor and thought, as well as 
did the labor in the forest and mine. 
Finally I was ready and began to 
catch fish, much more surely and 
abundantly than before, now that my 
fishing conduct had become so com- 
plicated, and consisted of so many 
operations performed so far away 
from the home of the fish, and so 
long before the actual catching of 
them. Getting lumber, digging ore, 
smelting iron, melting and making il 
into tools, growing hemp, flax and 
cotton, and spinning and weaving 
them into nets and sails, studying the 
science of navigation, building boats, 



rearing horses and oxen, building sta- 
bles and growing grain for them, 
road and bridge and wagon building 
and the whole industry of transpor- 
tation — all these industries had now 
become only steps or stages in th? 
very complicated process of catching 
a fish for dinner. And I shall call 
every one of these stages AN ANCIL- 
LARY INDUSTRY, because none of 
them are carried on with the view of 
directly producing or procuring some- 
thing to be consumed, but every one 
of them in the relation in which I 
have placed them in this illustration 
is carried on' indirectly to promote 
and make easier the catching of FISH 
TO BE EATEN. When I was grad- 
ing the road in the mountain pass 
far away from the lake, when I was 
feeding my oxen, spinning my cot- 
ton, I was really fishing. 

The point I wish to make is that 
every industry which men seriously 
follow is intended to promote the pro- 
duction of some article which is to be 
consumed or enjoyed by human be- 
ings. 

Well, as I did not eat or wear the net 
I made of hemp, flax and cotton, no: 
the iron I dug from the mine, the 
lumber I cut, the road I dug, the wa- 
gon I built, the boat I fashioned and 
sailed, in themselves, these had no 
VALUE or worth to me. But as 
they promoted the catching o* fish, in 
the FISH I CAUGHT I REALIZED 
THE VALUE OF ALL MY LABORS 
IN ALL THE ANCILLARY INDUS- 
TRIES. 



It follows, therefore, that in the 
books we read for pleasure, in the 
music, lectures, plays, songs, ser- 
mons, recitations for which we pay to 
hear, in the clothes we wear, tha 
food we eat, the houses and their 
furnishings and oraments in which we 
live, in the personal services we re- 
quire, such as the barber and the 
bootblack give us, in the medicines 
we take and the nursing and treat- 
ment given us by nurses and doctors, 
in the pleasure rides we take on the 
water and the land, the vicious pleas- 
ures of drunken debauchery, and the 
sober ones of wholesome recreation 
in all of these and only in them and 
the like of them do we at last realize 
the VALUE OF ALL HUMAN LAEOR 
wherever it may be usefully spent. 

A railroad and all its splendid, 
trains, has in itself no value for hu- 
man beings, though it be most perfect 
in equdpement and efficient in opera- 
tion. As soon as we take a pleasure 
ride on it, however, or as soon as 
one of its freight trains bears to us 
some book or other product, which 
we can consume or brings to us 
some person having skill to amuse 
or serve us or as soon as we use any 
commodity to the creation of which a 
railroad has in any way contributed, 
then a railroad begins to have HU- 
MAN VALUE. , 

II 

I and my class being allowed to 
use the guns and bloodhounds or 
other means of torture and death 



to sustain the claim we make of hav- 
ing the right to exclude all other 
classes of men from the use of the 
earth, sea and th natural elements, 
are in this AGE CALLED CAPITAL- 
ISTS. The standing armies, the 
navies, the militias and the court 
officers of all the nations of the 
worLd <are in modern times our guns 
and dogs, and millions of Joneses 
are ready always to serve us and 
hound and pursue the Smiths, com- 
pelling them to divide their catch of 
fish or whatever other fruit their la- 
bors may compel the earth to yield. 
Once I was a skilled fisherman. The 
art ol fishing was then one, which 
had not been reduced to a science 
which was readily subdivided into 
simple parts. It was a sort of tradi- 
tional mass of complicated formulas, 
imparted slowly by example and pre- 
cept. 

Young fishermen were glad to fish 
with me and learn all I knew of bulid- 
ing boats, weaving nets and sails and 
sailing boats and taking fish. 

To them I was like a father or an 
elder brother.. Together we braved 
the wave and the wind. The same" 
sun scorched us all, the same toils 
were shared in common, only I al- 
ways went before, struck the hardest 
blows, and took the post of greatest 
danger. My sons married the sisters 
of my young apprentices, and they 
married my daughters. Fishing was 
not a scientific process, and depend- 
ed less upon the make of tools and 
implements, than in the personal skill 



of the user of them. The business of 
fishing, and preparing to fish, would 
have been a sorry one, without the 
skill I had, and the traditions, which 
had been handed down to me from 
elder generations. I was a property 
owner, an employer of labor, but 
also I was a worker and a teacher 
of workers. I BELONGED TO THE 
VITAL MIDDLE CLASS, WHOSE 
CLAIM OF OWNING THE TECHNI- 
CAL MEANS OR TOOLS OF PRO- 
DUCTION AND THE GROUND RE- 
QUIRED FOR THE USE OF THEM 
RESTS UPON THE FACT THAT 
BOTH IMPLEMENTS AND LAND 
ARE TOOLS, WHICH NONE CAN 
USE SO WELL AND EFFICIENTLY 
AS THIS CLASS AND THE WORK- 
ERS EMPLOYED BY AND ASSOCI- 
ATED WITH IT. 

When I use the term middle class 
in the progress of this study, I shall 
mean such a vital, working middle 
class, as I have here described. 
When the world has grown older and 
fuller of men, when more men were 
bom into the world, without the 
right to rest upon the soil of whose 
dus-t their bodies were composed, and 
the implements of fishing and the 
preparatory processes and ancillary 
industries had become more and more 
complex, my relation to fishing radi- 
cally changed. It was then that I 
entirely ceased to have anything to 
do with fishing, except to claim the* 
right to shoot or have shot any one 
who fished in the lake against my 
will, and to make all who did fish 



there divide their catch with me. I 
no longer planned the building and 
sailing of boats nor the construction 
of nets or traps. I thought of nothi 
ing like that. I left all that to men 
like Smith, and 1 spent all my power 
01 thought, when ] was not amusing 
myself, in making plans to compel 
Smith to give more of his fish to 
me after he caught them. I had 
reached a very modern, up to date 
state of ownership, in which the fish- 
ing would go on not only as well, 
but even better without me, but in 
which I could not get on at all with- 
out the profit from fishing. J had 
become A CAPITALIST. 

All the industries which are tod^y 
owned by corporations are in the 
state to which I have supposed my 
industry of fishing in the lake to 
have arrived. The owner of corpo- 
rations do not work in the mines, 
mills and shops owned by them, and 
do not know any of the secrets or 
arts of production in the industries 
they happen to own. Hired men,, 
o* various grades, ranks and classes 
do all of the thinking, planning and 
labor of execution involved in the 
operation of the industries. The own- 
ers of stock in the corporations think 
only ol how to get the workers to work 
more and take less pay, and of how 
to get from each other, the profits, 
which all have gained from the labor 
of the workers and thinkers of the, 
industry. 

But cotton farming in the hilly re- 
gions of the Sou'th, especially, has 



not yet been furnished with imple- 
ments and tools large enough, the op- 
erations have not been simplified and 
specialized enough, and the surface 
of the land, rolling and changing, 
presenting new problems for solution 
every few yards, has not yet reach 
ed the state where corporate or cap- 
italistic ownership of the industry 
can get the largest yield at the low- 
est labor cost per acre of staple. 
Under these conditions the middle 
class working, land owning and tool 
owning farmer, owning a small farm, 
employing but few workers, is still 
necessary to the highest and least 
expensive yield of cotton staple per 
acre. * 

III 

I, and my class, having acknow- 
ledged power of life and death over 
other men, having the control of 
armies, navies and court officials, be- s 
ing resolved to make the most of our 
advantage have determined that the 
way to live easy and well is not to 
allow anybody to touch the earth and 
its elements, for the purpose of re- 
newing the powers of life, in their 
bodies except upon terms that may 
be most profitable or pleasing to our- 
selves. We find that we do not have 
to lay actual clfaim to the w 7 hole sur- 
face of the earth, in order to enjoy 
the substantial fruits of such a claim. 
In this day of specialization, when 
every worker produces a vast abun- 
dance of some one or few commod: 
ties, needed by others and not by 



himself, they are obliged to exchange 
their products with each other by 
the most convenient means possible. 

If we allow the working people, 
the farmers', cattle growers, millers, 
butchers, weavers, tailors and all the 
rest to exchange th:ir goods and war s 
in any WAY THAT MIGHT BE 
MOST CONVENIENT TO THEM, 
there is no doubt they would go right 
along, flourish wonderfully, because 
there never is any stint of the plen- 
ty they produce, but they would pass 
us entirely by, and we could get no- 4 
thing we need without working for 
it. So we long ago learned that one 
of the easiest ways for i^s to get con- 
trol of all wealth, would be to WAY- 
LAY THE WORKERS AND THEIR 
AGENTS, THE MERCHANTS, WITH 
GUNS IN THE PLACES WHERE 
THEY COME TO EXCHANGE WAR- 
ES WITH EACH OTHER. 

In this too, we are cunning and in- 
direct. We have had it declared 
that men can not use any medium of 
exchange, except GOLD. It is conven- 
ient, even to be carried in the pock- 
et, but we let it rest in the vaults of 
our banks and- treasuries, mostly, and 
we have paper or small coins, which 
represent the hidden gold, the real 
money. It would be awkard to drive 
a beef steer all the way from Texas 
to New York, to swap for a suit of 
clothes, but it is easy to carry cash. 
We make society, the state, support 
soldiers to shoot any body, who 
would interfere with this plan of ours 
and as the gold comes out of OUR 



EARTH, WHICH WE CONTROL 
WITH OUR GUNS, it virtually all be 
longs to us. Now really the workers 
do not exchange their products at the 
merchants place. They exchange in 
the place where they part with their 
labor or the thing which contains 
their labor, in exchange for GOLD, 
the common denominator of all pro- 
ducts of labor. Mill workers ex- 
change their labor at the pay window, 
farmers exchange where they sell 
the cotton, they and their children 
have produced. But we own practical- 
ly all that gold, and therefore all the 
bank notes, paper money and small 
coins oif baser metals, and we have 
the power of the nations to back our 
claim of ownership. We own it, but 
we have but little of the trouble of 
asserting and maintaining it, and 
guarding our rights in it. YOU DO 
THAT FOR US, WHILE WE ARE 
MORE PLEASANTLY PASSING THE 
TIME. But the employers of labor, 
the men . or corporations who own 
the mills, shops, mines, etc. and the 
land upon which industry is carried 
on, are obliged to borrow money 
from us, from time to time to pay us 
a share of wliat is withheld by them, 
farm the workers, and we call that 
share INTEREST. 

The gentlemen who in the older 
times, owned the land and what was 
on, over, and beneath it, could prop- 
erly call all of the wealth, which 
they took day by day from the work- 
ers as they produced it, RENT, and 
what was left to the workers WAGES. 



But now, the landlord calls his part 
rent, the money lender calls his part 
interest, and the speculator calls his 
part profit. But bear in mind, that 
every one of these are shares of val- 
ue, and that value is entirely the 
creation of human labor. HENCE 
TO DAY, RENT, INTEREST AND 
PROFIT, IN THE PUREST SENSE 
ARE THOSE PORTIONS OF VALUE 
WHICH ARE TAKEN FROM THE 
WORKERS WHO HAVE CREATED 
THEM, AND RECEIVED IN RE- 
TURN FOR THEM, NOTHING. 

The place where the worker is com 
pelled to divide the products or the 
VALUE, which his labor has created 
is at the point where he makes this 
imperfect exchange, giving LABOR 
FOR WAGES or the PRODUCT OF 
LABOR FOR A MARKET PRICE. 

A corporation is not a physical body 
It can not be seen, touched or ap- 
prehended by any of the senses of 
man. It lives in the legal act or 
judgement which pretends to create 
it, and in the imagination of man, 
when it has been trained to that 
feat of apprehension. 

But the law says it is a person. 
It can not touch or see or be touch- 
ed or seen, it can feel neither cold, 
hunger or other pain, but it can turn 
you out of house and home, take 
your cow, hog, horse, corn and bread 
A man can own shares in as many 
different corporations as he pleases, 
if he has enough money. Thus I as 
a CAPITALIST do not own the big- 
clothing factory clown yonder in that 



tall building. I do not own the 
building. I do not own the bank near 
by, which loans the money every pay 
day to pay the workers. But ONE 
CORPORATION owns the clothing 
factory, and I own most of the stock 
in that corporation. ANOTHER COR- 
PORATION owns the tall building 
and the land beneath it, and I own 
most of the stock in that corporation. 
Yet a THIRD CORPORATION owns 
the bank, nearby, and I own nearly 
all the stock in that corporation. So 
I borrow money from myself, and 
pay myself interest on it, I rent land, 
and pay myself rent on it. And by 
the invention, which we call the cor- 
poration, I am greatly multiplied, re- 
lieved of all responsibility, and a few 
of my kind is made to appear like 
a multitude. 

IV 

The original and still the principal 
use of cotton fiber is to make cloth- 
ing and bedding for human use. 

In the earliest times of cotton grow- 
ing, the growing of the plant was ob- 
viously a part of the industry of 
making clothing for the family, Each 
family fashioned its own tools for 
cultivation, out of flint and wood, 
grew the cotton, made the imple- 
ments for spinnin'g and weaving and 
sewing, then spun, wove, dyed and 
tailored the cloth. Along infinite 
stages of technical progress we have 
reached the stage, where the farmer 
forgets that he is a worker in the 
clothing industry, because he no long- 



er makes his own tools, he no 
longer spins, weaves, dyes and tailors 
but he merely plants, cultivates, ga- 
thers and disposes of the raw cotton. 
But whether tne cotton farmer ever 
thinks of it or not, he is growing 
cotton, principally because i* is need- 
ed for clothing, bedding and house 
furnishing, and not at all because 
speculators and mill owners like to 
get profits out of it. 

COTTON IS PRINCIPALLY USED 
AS CLOTHING, BEDDING AND 
HOUSE FURNISHING BY THE 
WORKING PEOPLE of the CIVILIZ- 
ED WORLD, WHO HAVE NOTHING 
TO PAY FOR IT, EXCEPT THEIR 
WAGES, hence the cotton market 
never can be broader, deeper or 
stronger than the wages of the work- 
ing class make it. This is what I 
wish you to remember 

V 

I now propose to come down to the 
very faithful servants and subjects 
of King Cotton. They are the white 
men, women and children, who work 
the cotton fields and gather the sta- 
ple everywhere except int hose parts 
of the south, which all together I wiP 
call the Black Belt or Negro Belt, 
where the plantations are frequently 
very large, the owners non-resident, 
and the workers negroes. 

The world war which broke out 
in Europe has shattered the cotton 
market, the labor of these white fa- 
thers, white mothers and their chil- 
dren has vanished, and nobody sees 



where it goes, debts are closing in 
upon, them that can not be paid, and 
thousands, millions of them are look- 
ing forward to many more months 
of privation, and even of bitter want. 
All over the United States, North, 
East, South and West the workers on 
the railroads, in the mines, lumber 
camps, mills, shops and city indus- 
tries are suffering even more acute- 
ly than the white workers of the cot- 
ton fields. Their old cotton clothing, 
made from last years cotton crop of 
the south because more and more 
threadbare, thinner and thinner, it 
tears and rips, and the wind comes 
in, their bedding of cotton stuff, and 
their house furnishings of cotton 
fabrics, made of other cotton crops 
are wearing away also. In the south 
and in New England, warehouses of 
the cotton mills are heaped with new 
cotton goods, which the cotton mill 
worker brethren of these other city 
workers have created with their la- 
bor, and the cotton fields of the 
South are snowy white with millions 
of bales of new cotton ready to be 
spun into more goods, to take the 
place of all those which are now so 
worn and tattered. In the United 
States there is to day many times 
more of every staple commodity, 
than all the people of the nation 
could consume before the same work- 
ers could produce as many more, and 
all of these commodities have been 
lately created by the labor of the 
very people who are now suffering 
and about to suffer, for the want of 



them. The whole cotton crop now in 
the fields of the South would supply 
about seventy-five pounds of lint cot- 
ton to each, man woman and child 
under the American flag. Seventy- 
five pounds each, is rather more thaD 
they need, five pounds, each is much 
more than they will be able to buy, 
and this is much less than they need. 
Fifty pounds, each per annum, for all 
purposes, would perhaps not be more 
than could be comfortably consum- 
ed! by the American people if they 
were able to buy it. But why can 
not the workers of America buy from 
each other the boots, shoes, clothing, 
food, comforts and luxuries, which 
they produce by their labor? They 
produce it all, and they do not spend 
a penny for anything else, but for 
the products of labor. 

I have already shown why they can 
not exchange their products or the 
value of their products with each 
other. If is because they do not re- 
ceive the VALUE OF THEIR PRO- 
DUCTS, WHEN THEY ATTEMPT 
TO EXCHANGE THEM OR THEIR 
CREATIVE LABOR POWER FOR 
THE CASH EQUIVALENT OF ALL 
PRODUCTS. The cash they get as 
wages or as the price of cotton is 
less than the value of the days work 
of the labor in the cotton. When 
the wage worker in the big industri- 
es works out the period to a pay day, 
he has created a certain quantity of 
value, which in some form or other, 
will at last be bought by a consumer, 
if one with the money can be found. 



But as we have seen, a part of that 
value is set aside into a share or 
fund, which goes to make rents, in- 
terest and profits, and the worker 
only gets what is left for his wages. 
When the farmer goes to the mark- 
et with cotton, the labor of men, 
women and children is wrapped in 
the bale, the value which they have 
created is contained in it, but the 
buyer expects to save some of that 
value for himself, as much as possi- 
ble, and also enough of it, besides, 
so that when he and the next capi- 
talist, who expects to handle it begin 
to play force or cunning against each 
other, there will be a safe margin 
or field of surplus value in the cot- 
ton, so that whether he pushes his 
opponent towards one end of it, or 
gets pushed by him towards the 
other, there will still be more value 
left for him in the cotton, than was 
in the cash he gave to the farmer. 
But one buyer does not always have 
his own way entirely in making the 
price. Other buyers and gorups of 
capitalists want a chance at the pro- 
fit, which can be taken out of the 
value created by the labor of the far- 
mer, his wife and little girls. 

They fight over this chance in the 
market. They beckon the farmer here 
and yonder, and the price goes up 
and down, hour by hour, but as every 
one of the contending buyers, intends 
to get cotton at less than it is 
wor+h, they never allow themselves 
to push each other to the outer edge 
of the field of value in the cotton. 



If the buyers and the capitalists who 
furnish them the money can not get 
something for nothing out of your 
cotton they will not touch it at all, and 
it is certain that you never can ex- 
pect any capitalist to pay you what 
your cotton is actually worth, in war 
times nor in peace. 

NOBODY CAN PAY THE FULL, 
FAIR, SOCIAL OR LABOR VALUE 
O^ ANY COMMODITY, EXCEPT 
THE FINAL CONSUMER, WHO HAP 
PENS TO HAVE THE MONEY. 

THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO CAN 
AFFORD TO, AND DO PAY THE 
FULL VALUE OF COTTON ARE 
THE FINAL -CONSUMERS WHO 
WEAR COTTON ON THEIR BACKS, 
USE IT FOR BEDDING AND'HOUSE 
FURNISHING, WHEN THEY HAVE 
THE MONEY. 

The reason then, why the workers 
can not exchange their abundant 
productions with each other, here in 
America, as they fight in Europe, is 
simply this: If they were allowed 
to do that, it is certain that there 
is a plenty of everything made in 
this country, every year to furnish 
them all out in far better style and 
comfort, than ever workers have 
been furnished, since civilization be- 
gan its course, but it is equally cer- 
tain of course, that if the workers 
were allowed to exchange products 
with each other, full value for full 
value, there could not be ONE PEN- 
NY OF RENT, INTEREST AND PRO- 
FITS left for the capitalists, and if 
they lived, they would have to work. 



Now it" the workers should arouse 
and demand the right to exchange 
their products, thus iairly, full value 
for full value, we capitalists are ob- 
liged to admit, that they would be 
asking NO MORE FOR THEMSELV- 
ES THAN THEY WERE WILLING 
TO ALLOW TO US, THAT IS, THE 
RIGHT TO WORK EV r ERY TIME 
YOU ARE WILLING; THE RIGHT 
TO TILL OR DIG THE EARTH, IN 
ANY SPOT, WHERE NO OTHER 
MAN IS TILLING OR DIGGING, 
AND THE RIGHT TO DEMAND THE 
FULL VALUE OF LABOR POWER 
EXPENDED OR ALL OF THE PRO- 
DUCT IN KIND. 

On the other hand, as we capita- 
lists to day have a much nicer 
thing than workers could have, even 
in an honest world, it is certain that 
WE ARE GOING TO CONTINUE TO 
ASK AND TAKE FOR OUR PART 
A GREAT DEAL MORE THAN WE 
ARE WILLING TO GIVE. In truth 
my friends, if you will but look well 
at our situation, you must see that 
we have nothing to give. The giv- 
ing must all come from the workers 
side, or else we will soon go out of 
business as capitalists. 

BUT THERE ARE MILLIONS OF 
BRAVE AND INTELLIGENT WORK- 
ERS ALL OVER THE LAND IN- 
CLUDING THE WHITE FARM 
WORKERS OF THE SOUTH, and 
why is it that they do not rise up 
all together and take into their own 
hands the business of distributing 
and exchanging their own products? 



Why is it that you millions of farm- 
ers and intelligent city workers are 
utterly helpless before a small h&ncL- 
fu-, of us capitalists? 

There are probably less than a 
hundred REAL BIG DOMINATING 
CAPITALISTS in the United States. 

The way we hold you down, and 
make you give us your labor by the 
day or in, your cotton, all in a lump, 
for some little fraction of its true 
value, is through your minds. WE 
OWN YOUR MINDS; WE OWN THE 
OPINIONS YOU HAVE ABOUT 
THINGS; WE OWN ALL YOUR 
FALSE PRIDES AND VANITIES; 
WE OWN ALL THAT WHICH YOU 
CALL YOUR MORAL VIRTUES; WE 
OWN YOUR SACRED SENTIMENTS 
OF PATRIOTISM, AND WE EVEN 
ARE ABLE TO MAKE YOUR PIETY 
A GREAT SOURCE OF PROFIT TO 
OURSELVES AND A VERY CITA- 
DEL AND FORTRESS TO PRO- 
TECT OUR INTERESTS; WE OWN 
YOUR LAWS; THE VERY HOPES 
IN YOUR HEARTS, WHILE NEAR- 
LY ALWAYS DECEIVING YOU, AL- 
WAYS TURN OUT VALUABLE TO 
US; AVE OWN THE DAY DREAMS 
IN WHICH YOU INDULGE; WE 
OWN YOUR CASTLES IN SPAIN, 
EVERY BATTLEMENT AND TOW- 
ER OF THEM; WE OWN YOUR 
AMBITIONS; IF YOU ARE SELF- 
ISH, SO MUCH THE TIGHTER ARE 
YOU BOUND AND DELIVERED TO 
US; IF YOU ARE GREEDY, WE 
AND NOT YOU ARE MADE THE 
RICHER TKEREEY; IF YOU LUST 



AFTER PROFITS AND THE GET- 
TING OF MUCH FOR LITTLE OR 
SOMETHING FOR NOTHING, WE 
ARE GLAD, FOR WE SHALL MORE 
SURELY GIVE YOU NOTHING AND 
TAKE FROM YOU FOR OUR PAY, 
AND YOU WILL NOT COMPLAIN; 
WE OWN THAT DESIRE WHICH 
YOU FEEL TO TURN TO YOUR 
ADVANTAGE THE WEAKNESS 
AND IGNORANCE OF YOUR FEL- 
LOW MAN, BECAUSE OUR YOKE 
IS THEREBY MADE THE STRONG- 
ER UPON YOUR NECKS. 

Every throb of your brain, is so 
well controlled by these old habits 
o: thoughts, which we own and you 
still follow, that each time the heart 
drives the blood through your brain 
some thought is nourished and fed 
there in your mind, which makes it 
more easy for us Oligarchs of Su- 
preme Wealth, to get what your la- 
bor produces, and harder for you to 
keep it. We GREAT CAPITALISTS 
every year spend quite a neat sum 
of clean cash upon those public chan- 
nels to which you are in the habit, 
of going to get your ideas re-inforc- 
ed, not renewed, but made more like 
the same thing than before. 

Principally by controlling the big 
bills for advertising in their columns, 
we are able to control ail the editori- 
al opinions and to color all the news 
we wish the papers to tell, and to 
suppress, all that we do not want 
you to know. The big daily and 
weekly papers and magazines, with 
hardly any exceptions, are therefore 



not organs of information, but of mis- 
information. They do not function 
in order that you may be helped tc 
know the truth, but that you may be 
kept from knowing it. The Boards of 
Education, the schools and colleges 
and the text books out of which the 
young folks go through the form o2 
being taught, are all well looked af- 
ter by us. By controlling the schools 
colleges and school books, we are 
able to do a great deal in the way or 
mal forming and stunting the minds 
of the young. Our influence in the 
churches is far greater than yours, 
because we pay the preachers and the 
church institutions, not more money 
on the whole, but bigger, more com- 
pact and conspicicus lumps of it at 
cncc. Only the other day, one of oui 
chief capitalists of the south, who 
his grown great and rich and wise 
and pious, by selling a poisonous dope 
to nervous women and to children, 
gave a million dollars of sanctified 
cash, raked in nickel by nickel, as 
he sold the children "pisen" — gave a 
million dollars to the university of a 
great church. 

Now who believes that the minis- 
ters of this church will ever again, if 
ever they did in the past, warn the 
weak sisters and the children of 
their flocks, that the great benefac- 
tors dope, is a nerve and stomach 
destroying poison? But these poor 
ministers have to have pay and 
place, and before you get too mad 
with them, remember that we own 
yen just like we own the preachers. 



Indeed I believe we have a tighter 
grip on you, because you do not real- 
ly so much want to break up the old 
game as to get on the winning side 
of it. What you are kicking about I 
fear, is not because the POOR 
WORKER HAS TO WORK FOR 
THE RICH IDLER, BUT MERELY 
BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT ONE OF 
THE RICH IDLERS. You do not 
want poverty abolished, yet, perhaps, 
but just want to get out of it, your- 
self, where you can make those you 
left behind support you. Is that the 
truth? The other day I stepped out 
here in Summervilleand bought some 
cheap, coarse cotton underwear. I 
cheerfully paid the price, and the 
merchant did not cheat me. That is 
not the place where cheating is gen- 
erally done. The real cheating is 
not done by the merchant, but it is 
done where the raw products of la- 
bor, such as lint cotton are sold or 
where wages are paid. But I had a 
fancy to figure. I weighed the cot- 
con and made my figures. I found 
that a pound of cotton in the coarse, 
knit underwear was worth ninety six 
cents. In nearly all other kinds of 
goods it was worth much more, and 
in some kinds a great deal more, for 
instance in handkerchiefs of the 
plainest kind, it was worth $3.20 a 
pound. 

All the labor performed in the field 
and in the ancillary industries to 
make the pound of cotton, were equal 
to all the balance that was put on 
it to turn the raw cotton into under- 



wear. That is the labor cost of mak- 
ing the raw cotton, was half of the 
whole labor cost. 

A pound of lint cotton on the 
farmers wagon in Summerville ought 
therefore to have been worth forty- 
eight cents on that day. But it was 
selling for only six. The farmer was 
only able to get one-eighth ol the \ al 
ue of his cotton. He was entitled to 
forty-eight cents, or very probably 
more, and would be glad to get it, if 
he was not afraid of swindling people 
whom he would be very sorry to see 
having to work, as he and his wife 
and little girls do. 

But when I soberly tell you that 
the great reason why you do not get 
more than from one fourth to one- 
eighth of the value of your cotton, 
is that the working people are not 
paid enough wages or to state the 
same thing in other words, because 
the capitalists get too much rents, 
interest and profits, you begin to 
tremble and turn white around the 
lips. Surely I am touching upon 
holy ground with a profane tread. 
How dare I speak to you of wages 
being too low, when last year, along 
in the showery weeks of June, while 
the crab grass was webbing in the 
cotton rows, you yourself, became one 
of the ANCIENT AND HONORABLE 
ORDER OF EMPLOYERS, GIVING 
EMPLOYMENT AND THE BLES- 
SING OF WAGES TO THE SHIFT- 
LESS CLASS, for did you not hire 
Joe, the widows crippled lad, to chop 
cotton, and pay him only fo^ty cents 



a day, because as you said he was 
only a cripple, and did you not, as 
any enterprising, far sighted busi- 
ness man would do, coax, worry 
flatter and excite Joe along, until he 
hoed as much cotton as you could? 
And of course it would be suicide 
for one who employs labor on such 
a liberal scale to cut loose in favor 
of high wages, nay, not even if cot- 
ton stays at six cents. Or the other 
way I stated the difficulty, cuts you 
to the quick just the same. Bo 

you not own forty acres of ridge 
land, nearly paid for or having only 
a small mortgage on it or do you not 
intend some of these days to own it 
or a bigger farm, and then of course 
you will be right on the side of 
those who get tfce rent, interest and 
profits. Why of course, if cotton 
never goes above six cents, you can 
not, as being the far sighted business 
man, you are afraid to attack rents, 
interest and profits, for though you 
get but little 01 them here below, 
yet who knows but what your great 
grandson might some day be a capit- 
alist, if we just leave the system 
standing here to give him his chance. 

Truly, now, where are you on this 
question of WAGES against RENTS, 
INTEREST AND PROFITS? We will 
perhaps have to do a little more 
defining, illustrating and digging in- 
to the history of the evolution of 
industry and the classes superimpos- 
ed upon industry. 

Forty years ago, here in my little 
village of Summerville, hemmed 



round by wild hills and wide forests, 
far from the sound of the locomotive, 
the tanning of leather and the manu- 
facture of shoes and other leather 
products was going on in perfection. 
There was one small tan yard, one 
small shoe shop attached to it, where 
one or two hired workers under th3 
eyes, and with the help and skilled 
leadership of the owner worked away 
at their little benches, with their 
small knives, awls, lasts and ham- 
mers, making good shoes and boots 
and harness, out and out, beginning 
with the cow hide freshly torn from 
the cattle. Across the sleepy old 
street was a wagon shop, where the 
two owners, with their own small 
equipment of simple, one man tools 
or units of production, started from 
the raw lumber just ripped from the 
wild trees that hung over the very 
edge of the village, and turned out 
perfect wagons and beds for them. 
I could name other industries, which 
were then carried on in the same 
small manner, and by going back far 
enough, we should find all of the in- 
dustries in a like, one man tool 
stage of production. 

The state would have done no good 
owning that shoe or that wagon shop 
There was nothing in the world to ■ 
make any one think of the state tak- 
ing over the ownership of such shops. 
A business like either of those prim- 
itive manufactories, could not be suc- 
cessfully carried on by any plan, ex- 
cept that which gave the ownership 
of it, to its best and most skillful - 



worker, who was the prosperous 
small MIDDLE CLASS OWNER 
WHO WORKED WITH HIS HIRED 
MEN IN THAT TAN YARD AND 
SHOE SHOP or the other who vvorked 
in his wagon shop. Now the mech- 
anics who came along and hired to 
work in these shops, were of two 
kinds. One was the kind of jolh 
good souls, who never can take re 
spoiisibility upon themselves, be- 
cause they are not built that way. 
They could never organize an indus- 
try. They lack decision, initiative 
and self assertion. They are the fill- 
ers, the space occupiers, who are 
not to be counted as a force on the 
revolutionary or active side of any 
social movement. The other kind 
were full of energy, initiative, audaci- 
ty and nerve. These workers were 
eager to learn all the owner knew a- 
bout tanning leather or making shoes 
and harness or wagons. They could 
see that with a very few dollars AND 
THE MASTERS SKILL they woufd 
be able to set up their own shops. 
Hence to them wage service was only 
a form of preparatory training, and 
not a permanent condition, of which 
their life philosphy would have any 
need to take account. 

Nobody ever thought of organizing 
a labor union among these workers, 
but suppose that some magnetic agi 
tator, getting himself over charged 
with zeal upon some other field of 
industry, had strayed into this, where 
not being able to restrain himself, by 
sheer personal force he rounded a 



bunch of the workers in such shops 
up into a labor union, including both 
kinds of workers, whom I have de- 
scribed; what would happen? If the 
union brought no financial advantage 
to its members if it put no more 
money in their pockets, the last 
class of the workers, the self seek- 
ers would soon abondoii it, because 
they never waste time on mere senti- 
ment. The first or irresponsible 
class of workers, being left alone in 
the unions w T ould do with it, as they 
do with anything else, left wholly to 
them, NOTHING. 

If however the union did bring fin- 
ancial advantage to its members in 
their capacity of wage earners, the 
livest, self seekers, would feel their 
pockets swelling, and the hour ap- 
proaching more certainly, wmen they 
could buy the small out fit necessary 
for a shop, and become themselves, 
masters, owners, employers of labor, 
an<^ of course they would not like to 
create conditions, which would make 
it permanently impossible for them 
to get cheap labor, alter they have 
reached their natural station as em- 
ployers. Therefore whether the un- 
ion made money for its members or 
did not, the only material with life 
enough in it to make a union formi- 
dable to employers w r ould soon aban- 
don it under such MIDDLE CLASS 
SHOP OR WORKING CONDITIONS 
AS I HAVE DESCRIBED AND AS 
GENERALLY EXIST TO DAY IN 
THE HILLY PARTS OF THE COT- 
TON BELT, ON THE TRUCK FARMS 



NEAR THE CITIES, AND WHERE- 
EVER ELSE THE FARMS ARE 
SMALL. The reason there are no 
labor unions among the men who 
work for shares and wages on the 
cotton farms in the hill sections and 
in the long leaf pine belt, is the 
same reason that prevents the owners 
of the farms in the same sections 
from maintaining any like organiza- 
tion among themselves. 

On such farms the unit of produc- 
tion is small, and it does not require 
a very great outlay of capital to be- 
gin, at least as a tenant farmer. 
Hence all the livest, most forcible of 
the share and wage workers are 
thinking of no other condition for 
themselves, but that of being finally 
tenant farmers, at least, and per- 
haps, landowning farmers. The small 
unit of production, consists of a 
cheap mule, a set of one horse plows 
a wagon, a hoe, an axe, and the 
smallness of this unit constantly in- 
vites every one of the livest, bold- 
est share and wage workers to think 
of setting up strictly for himself. As 
soon as he can get that mule, ever 
a blind one, those plows, that wagon, 
hoe and axe, wnat the hades does he 
care, how little the other share work- 
ers and wage workers get, for will 
he not then be in the market to hire 
some of them, at least on some small 
scale? The conditions of production, 
both the land surface on which the 
farming is carried on, and the mules 
and tools, with which it is done, ir- 
resistibly act to make individualists 



out of all the positive, constructive 
characters among the farming popula- 
tion. That is to say, everything 
around the farmer, and his hired men 
also, if the hired man is able to think 
from the plow handle in his hands 
anil the mules he drives, to the pat- 
chy character of the hilly lands, is 
a temptation to isolation and to make 
every man individualistic, self seek- 
ing, and looking out lor himself a- 
gainst every body else, according to 
his lights on the subject. IT IS 
THEREFORE IMPOSSIBLE FOR 
ANY ORGANIZATION SIMILAR TO 
A LABOR UNION TO ARISE AND 
PERSIST, EITHER AMONG THE 
OWNERS, TENANTS OR SHARE 
AND WAGE WORKERS WHERE 
FARMING IS CARRIED ON UNDER 
SUCH CONDITIONS AS I HAVE 
DESCRIBED. And if any of the 
farmers, living on such farms have 
any prejudice against the labor un- 
ion movement, it can not be because 
their is any danger of the unions 
organizing the farm workers around 
them. 

But you farm owners and tenants, 
who employ workers on shares or 
for wages to make crops have had in 
recent years to experience almost a 
total reconstruction of your working 
class. The bold, restless, livest ones 
of them have not been content with 
the small wages you could pay them, 
and their families craved more in- 
timate contact with their kind — they 
have been leaving you in swarms, 
and what remains, consists largely of 



a class, without intiative and audaci- 
ty enough to make the break to the 
cities and big machine industries and 
"public works" as they call them in 
the south. If your farms and tools 
and teams, seed and fertilizers and a 
years supplies were turned over to 
this class, you know, and I know, 
they would hardly make back the 
seed the first year, and that in due 
time, they would let the fields grow 
up, the ditches fill and the buildings 
crumble down. 

Now suppose the state were to take 
over your farms, your little hill side 
patches, or your pine barren fields, 
down yonder among the gall berries 
and scrub palmettoes. Who believes 
that any system could be devised, 
which would fit the millions and 
odd, different conditions of soil, sur- 
face, etc, which you millions of small 
ovners have to meet, each one for 
himself and in his own way? You 
know, and I know, that the state 
would fail as badly with your farms, 
as would the class who now helps 
you and your tenants to work them 
on shares and for wages. There is 
no danger of the state taking over 
your farms, while they have to be 
operated with units of production, 
such as now prevail. There is no dan- 
ger of you LOSING THEM TO THE 
STATE, BUT THERE IS A PRAC- 
TICAL CERTAINTY, THAT YOUR 
FARMS WILL GO THE SAME WAY 
AS THE SMALL SHOE SHOPS AND 
WAGON SHOPS HAVE ALREADY 
GONE. BIG METHODS WILL BE 



DEVISED FOR FARMING YOUR 
LANDS ON A LARGE SCALE, AND 
AS YOU SMALL FELLOWS CAN 
NOT OWN THE BIG METHODS, 
THE CORPORATIONS WILL OWN 
YOUR FARMS, AND YOUR CHIL- 
DREN WILL WORK THEM, NOT AS 
TENANTS, BUT FOR WAGES. State 
ownership is not the thing, which is 
about to swallow you, neither is the 
labor union opening its jaws for 
you, but the corporation paunch is 
being expanded to engulf your farms, 
and enslave your children. 

But let us revert. The hired men, 
who are employed for wages or 
shares and directed by you and your 
tenants, could not even feed them- 
selves with the produce they would 
grow on your farms, if it were not 
for the skilled oversight, the plan- 
ning and direction, which you and 
your tenants give to them. Now it 
is true, besides, that in the sec- 
tions of the cotton belt to which I 
have been referring, the small own- 
ers of farms, are contsantly losing 
money, instead of making profits on 
the share and wage workers they 
employ. 

Now what do rent, interest and 
profit mean to men, who are the 
first to rise on their on farme in 
the morning, the last to go to bed, 
the longest at work, who plan every 
furrow and thinks out every program? 
You get no RENT, NO INTEREST 
ON CAPITAL OR PROIT ON IN- 
VESTMENT, in the sense in which 
those terms are used by modern, 






scientific political economists. What 
you have been getting and calling 
rent and profit, is not only not rent 
and profit, in the true sense, but it 
is even less than good wages — a 
great deal less than good wages, and 
far less than the VALUE OF THE 
LABOR WHICH YOU EXPEND BY 
MIND AND MUSCLE UPON THE 
PRODUCTS OF YOUR FARM. 

Six months ago if you had brought 
me a pound of your lint cotton, I 
would have paid you twelve cents 
for it. Then I would have run it 
through my clothing factory, in the 
tall building yonder, and when it 
came out, in the form of coarse knit 
underwear, and was carried over to 
the retail merchant's across the 
street, and wrapped and handed back 
to you, you would have paid me, or 
the merchant, who is merely my col- 
lector, ninety six cents for the same 
pound, if you could find the cash. 
Now when I have the pound of cot- 
ton sold, I get the full value of all 
the labor that has been expended 
upon it. 

When you sell your pound of cot- 
ton you will get six or twelve cents 
for it, if you have proved to us capi- 
talists, that you can not keep strength 
enough in your bodies to make 
more for a less price. But we do 
not propose to take your word about 
it. We give you what we think is 
enough, and if you do get too weak 
and wabbly to make enough cotton 
next year, then you have proved to 
us, that we are not paying you en- 



ough. As far as we are concerned, 
WE CAPITALISTS PREFER TO LET 
THE IRON LAW OF WAGES FIX 
THE PRICE OF YOUR COTTON. 

So you see it is not you farmers, 
who work on the farms you own, 
that get the rents, interest and pro- 
fits of industry, for you can not col- 
lect them. Whenever you read of 
RENTS, INTEREST AND PROFIT as 
used by a radical thinker, do not 
allow the cold chills to creep up 
your spine, do not tremble any more, 
let your upper lip keep its color, for 
nobody is talking about any money 
or kind of money, that ever you get. 
The writer is speaking of the kind 
of money, and the only kind that 
makes us capitalists, fatter, strong- 
er and better than you. Do you get 
a thousand dollars worth of rent, or 
what you have been calling rent, my 
small farmer friend? 

Well, I have made ten bales of cot- 
ton by the labor of my own hands, 
and would enjoy the privilige of do- 
ing it again, if I could get the value 
of the labor I put in the cotton, as 
the capitalists, do get the value of 
all the labor that everybody puts in 
it, when the finished cotton cloth- 
ing is sold to the wearer. 

If I could collect mine in the raw 
cotton, as the capitalists get every- 
bodys in the finished goods, my ten 
bales of cotton would sell to day for 
no less than fifty cents a pound, and 
bring me TWENTY-FIVE HUNDRED 
DOLLARS, and where would you be 
with the stingy wad, you call your 



rent, and the mangy scrapings, 
which you call the profits off the la- 
bor of crippled Joe, the widow's lad? 

The very doodle bugs ought to be 
ashamed of us. 

But this war over in Europe has 
made the people see a crisis, which 
has all the time been lurking near 
us, visible, to any who would look. 
And with cotton selling around six 
cents, debt and bankruptcy and want 
looking round the coiner, what are 
the farmers doing? 

Not a single thing have they done 
or tried to do for themselves. They 
have by ten thousand times ten 
ten thousand petitions been asking 
for help FROM THOSE WHO LIVE 
AND HAVE THEIR BEING SOLELY 
BY GETTING HELP FOR THEM- 
SELVES. 

The cotton farmers have been bit- 
ten to the vitals by the dog of 
capitalism, and crying to. nobody but 
capitalists for he'p, they are being- 
given a treatment, which consists 
not only of the hair of the same dog, 
but more applications of his teeth. 

WHAT BROUGHT THE WAR IN 
EUROPE AND THE CRISIS TO THE 
FRONT IN COTTON IS NOTHING 
BUT THE APPETITE OF CAPITAL- 
ISTS FOR PROFITS. 

These capitalists caused your 
w T oes, they can not continue to be 
capitalists and to get profits, with 
out causing you more woes, and 
bringing more wars upon mankind. 
Capitalists can not live in a world 
where there is no misery and no 



want, my friends. Neither can they 
live in a world where there are no 
armies and wars. How do you ex- 
pect them to cure the things, by 
which alone they can live and thrive' 
If you and your babies, were as fat 
and rosy as they and theirs, they 
would have to work, instead ot let- 
ting you work for them. The Bel- 
gians might as well tell the Ger- 
mans to quit shooting, because it 
hurts them, as for you to ask the 
capitalists to help you get the value 
of your cotton. 

If they should allow you to get the 
value of your cotton, they would 
have to quit being capitalists and go 
to work like you do for a living. 

If you really want the value of 
your cotton, of your farm truck, gar- 
den truck or any product of your la- 
bor you will have to quit asking- 
capitalists, their editors and politic- 
ians and the would be capitalists of 
your little towns to help you get it. 
You will have to depend upon your- 
selves and upon those who are really 
YOUR CUSTOMERS. 

For remember it well, although the 
capitalists or their agents seem to 
buy your cotton and thus to be your 
customers, in fact they only thrust 
themselves between you and your 
cuFtomers, who are in fact the peo- 
ple who wear cotton goods, use them 
for bedding and house furnishing in 
their homes, and these people are 
working people and not the small 
handful of capitalists, who do not use 



ten bales of your cotton upon them- 
selves. 

Your friends are the people who 
wear and consume cotton goods. Your 
enemies are the people who prevent 
these customers of yours from get- 
ting the full value of their labor, so 
that they can give you the lull value 
of yours. 

VI 

Let us consider the manner in 
which these customers of yours, the 
w r orking people of all other indus- 
tries, are made to exchange their la- 
bor for your cotton. 

We have aerady shown that the val- 
ue of all human labor, seriously ex- 
pended in any industry, whatever, as 
in road building, digging iron ore, op- 
erating a railroad, is finally realized 
when human beings begin to consume 
the finished products or enjoy the 
perfected personal services or amuse- 
ments or pastimes, which the labor 
expended in these industries has 
helped to make possible. 

When I buy a show ticket, I pay 
my share of the cost of all the labor, 
which was expended in training the 
actors and in equip! ng them with 
costumes and bringing them to my 
town. 

When I eat fish for dinner, I pay 
my share of the cost of growing the 
flax, hemp or cotton of which the 
fish net, which caught him was wov- 
en. I pay some small fraction of all 
the many items of labor cost involv- 
ed in building the railroad over 



which the fish came to me from the 
sea. In the price I pay for that fish, 
there are included countless other 
fractions of labor, performed here and 
yonder, far away from where the fish 
was caught, both in time and space. 

Now in this study I intend to call 
any person, who sells an article to 
the final consumer, as a fish to be 
eaten or a hat to be worn, a show 
ticket or an excursion ticket on the 
boat or the train; any person who 
performs for pay a personal service, 
as the barber or the bootblack — all 
such sellers of commodities or ser- 
vices, I intend to call RETAILERS, 
to give the word just a little broader, 
but not a contrary meaning to that 
which it already has. 

I have already told you that these 
retailers, including the little mer- 
chants in your country villages, with 
whom you deal, are collectors for the 
REAL CAPITALISTS, who sit tar be- 
hind them, at the apex of a pyramid, 
in which these merchants struggle 
and make faces at each other and 
their customers, away down near 
the base. 

Not leaving out the workers who 
make you farm tools and fertilizers, 
here is the industry of making cot- 
ton clothing for the use of wearers. 
We will notice among the workers 
who make cotton clothing, the farm- 
ers and their children who hoed and 
picked the cotton, the little girls 
and boys, who spun and wove it into 
cloth at the mill, the little girls and 
the underpaid, consumptive women, 






who cut and sewed the cloth into 
garments, at the sweat shop, dray- 
men and railroad crews, the workers 
in the wholesale warehouses, who 
handled it and at last your village 
merchant and his clerk, wrapping it 
for the consumer — tor all these people 
are necessary to do the work of 
bringing the garments to that state 
and place, where the consumer can 
begin to wear them. In as far as 
any of them are occupied in helping 
to bring the clothing to the consum- 
er, we will call them clothing work- 
ers, farmer and all, going into the 
list. Now these clothing makers do 
not need all the clothing, which al- 
together they produce and handle, 
but they need shoes, books, music, 
show tickets, pleasure trips, sermons, 
shaves, shines, food and some of 
them think they need cigars to 
smoke, liquor to drink, and all sorts 
of vices, by which to kill time. They 
have nothing to give for all these 
things, but the clothing they have 
produced or the fractions of labor, 
they have here and yonder perform- 
ed to help on the clothes to comple- 
tion and to the back of the wearer. 

But they can not all follow the 
clothing from this point and that 
where they variously and scatering- 
ly add their different mites of la- 
bor to it, until the clothing is finish- 
ed and brought to the wearer. When 
each ore of the workers adds his 
mite of labor, he has put his share 
of value into the material, which is 
at last to be clothing, and he is then, 



for his part, ready to exchange his 
share of the value for the cash equiv- 
alent of the things which he happens 
to need. So if he is a worker in a 
mill or on a railroad he tries to ex- 
change his part of the value, which 
he put into the clothing at the pay 
window of the company, for cash, 
which represents, any of the things 
he may happen to want. If he har 
pens to be a cotton farmer, he tries 
to make the exchange by selling the 
cotton out of which the clothing is 
to be made. But at every one of 
these points, where the many differ- 
ent kinds of workers in their differ- 
ent ways, try to make an exchange 
of the value they have added to the 
clothing in process of being made, for 
cash equivalent of the other things 
they happen to need, there is al- 
ways another fellow, who claims to 
have a higher right to control the 
value, and always insists upon having 
a share or more shares of it, before 
he will allow the worker to have any 
of it. All commodities are created 
the same way, and all the workers 
who create them are in this same 
manner compelled to give much for 
little, when they try to exchange the 
part of the value they have created, 
for the cash equivalent of the other 
sorts of commodities they need. We 
might by many different mathemati- 
cal processes demonstrate the em- 
barassments that follow upon such a 
crippled, limping system of ex- 
change. For instance suppose that 
there were just two millions of 






workers in all the world, producing 
all the commodities day, by day, 
which the people of the world con- 
sumed. Suppose twenty thousand 
capitalists owned the land, tools, 
machines, railroads, ships and money 
which were used in all the industries 
Every cent the capitalists receive, 
and every cent the workers receive 
will have to come from the sales, 
day after day to the final consumers, 
of the final, usable, eatable, drink- 
able, enjoyable output, which these 
workers create, day by day, in ave- 
rage quantities. 

Suppose that one million of the 
workers and the capitalists who em- 
ployed them, ten thousand in num- 
ber, lived in the Old World, and 
the other million of workers and 
their capitalists lived in the New 
World, and that each day, every 
worker on the average created two 
dollars worth of commodities, and 
made them ready to be delivered by 
the retailers, to the people who were 
going to eat them, drink, wear or 
in any manner personally enjoy 
them. 

In the Old World they are produc- 
ing everything, which the people of 
the New World need. In the New 
World, they are producing, precisely 
what the people of the Old World 
need, and every night, when the 
work is done, each worker in the 
Old W T orld, desires to exchange the 
two dollars worth of value, which he 
has that day created, for cash, which 
will mean some of the things produc- 



ed in the New World, while over in 
the New World, the workers will be 
wanting to exchange their days pro- 
duction of value for the cash, which 
means some of the products of the 
Old World. To the workers on both 
sides of the ocean, the capitalists 
send their agents, who say: ''We are 
the ones to make the exchange for 
you, by means of cash. But we have 
to have a profit for saving you all 
this trouble. So take this dollar as 
wages and we will have a dollars 
worth of profit, left in the value you 
have created to day, and we will 
spread that dollar out and call it, 
rents, interest and profit." So when 
tine farmers have all sold their pro- 
ducts that day and the workers have 
all been paid, they all lie down to 
sleep, each with ONE DOLLAR IN 
HIS POCKET. Next morning the 
merchants of the world, put up these 
new goods on the opposite sides of 
the ocean. On each side there is on 
the shelves of the retailers TWO 
MILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORTH OF 
COMMODITIES WAITING FOR SALE 
as the million of workers of all kinds 
on each side, by all their various co- 
ordinated labors, yesterday, as they 
will every day, produced and finally 
finished ready for use, two dollars 
worth of commodities each. When 
all the workers start to work in the 
morning, their wives with the dollar 
each, start out shopping, and the 
merchants are glad to hear them com- 
ing across the sea in opposite direc- 
tions in their lightning airships, for 



the merchants do not know any bet- 
ter than to think they have a fair 
chance to sell the goods that were 
made yesterday, and that will be 
made every day. Now the wives of 
the workers on the two sides of the 
o:ean ought to be able to trade even, 
and clean up that whole days recipts 
oj: finished, usable commodities, for 
iheir husbands on the opposite sideb 
have produced exactly equal amounts 
in value. But when the Old World 
wives, light from their air ships at 
the doors of the retailers on the 
New World side, they only have a 
total of one million dollars in their 
poskets, and after spending the last 
penny of it, they fly back over the 
sea to cook dinner, leaving a mil- 
lion dollars worth still with the mer- 
chants. A dollar a day would be 
pretty good spending for a worker, 
if that was all his pay. On the other 
side of the sea, exactly the same sort 
of thing would be happening. But 
the capitalists. Oh, yes, how nice 
to have rich folks around. They 

come in the afternoon leisurely, ele- 
gantly to shop, each one of them on 
both sides of the sea having received 
as profits on industry yesterday, as 
they will every day, ONE HUNDRED 
DOLLARS. So they spend fifty 
dollars a piece with the marchants, 
which makes the merchants bow and 
scrape mightily, feeling that surely 
such wads are going to save them. 
But after the ten thousand old world 
capitalists have spent their fifty each 
with the New World retailers, these 



still have on hand a half million dol- 
dars worth of yesterday's receipt of 
finished, commodities. For, come to 
think about it, if a capitalist, spends 
his full daily income every day, he 
will soon be no capitalist at all. And 
looking upon the situation, as we 
have it here, lined up distinctly, to 
make the illustration simple, the 
TWO MILLIONS OF DOLLARS 
WORTH OF FINISHED, USABLE 
COMMODITIES, WHICH ALL THE 
WORKERS OF THE NEW WORLD, 
BY THEIR CO-ORDINATED LA- 
BORS, DAILY COMPLETE AND 
BRING IN REACH OF THE EAT- 
ERS, WEARERS AND OTHER PER- 
SONAL USERS, CAN NOT ALL BE 
SOLD, UNLESS THE PEOPLE WHO 
HAVE THE VALUE OF THE 
OTHER TWO MILLIONS OF DOL- 
LARS WORTH OF LIKE COMMOD- 
ITIES, CREATED IN THE SAME 
TIME AND MANNER, IN THE OLD 
WORLD, ARE WILLING TO SPEND 
EVERY PENNY OF THAT VALUE. 
Production is folly unless it is fol- 
lowed by use. But merchants sel- 
dom, if ever, think of their situation 
in a practical, scientific way. They 
build castles in the air, and still wor- 
ship ialse and helpless gods. But 
when night comes our merchants on 
each side of the ocean, must never- 
theless notice that they are receiv- 
ing each day, a half million of dol- 
lars of goods, in excess of what they 
can sell. 

And the ways they figure out for 
solving the difficulty of this surplus, 



are all equally vain, and amount to 
the same thing, sooner or later. One 
way is, when you notice your part of 
that surplus heaping on your shelves, 
to say you will buy less goods. All 
right, but at their source, the goods 
begin to get cheap, and some fool- 
learning how much cheaper he can 
buy them, than you bought those in 
your stock, opens up a stock, fresh 
bought, and cuts the price, under the 
cost you paid. 

Or when you notice the surplus af- 
ter the first days business you may 
decide that the way to get rid of it 
is to sell it on a credit. But you will 
see it keeps piling up every day. All 
the buyers together, as we have stat- 
ed, part of them because they do 
not receice the cash, and part because 
they are capitalists and are saving 
part of what they do receive, only 
pay cash, day by day, for three parts 
of the goods day by day received. So 
the shrewd merchant can not wholly 
jscape this inevitable surplus. In 
some way, soon or late, it must rise 
like a tide to the doors of the strong- 
est, and even flow in upon him, 
where he will do well if it does not 
swamp him in bankruptcy. For I 
have truly said that the retail class 
are the collectors, upon whom de- 
volves the social burden of collect- 
ing by the sale of the final output 
of all the industries, all the incomes 
which the people of the world receive. 
Not only that, but as a class thay 
are under bond to collect, the incom- 
es of everybody else, as they have 



to pay for their goods before they sell 
them or to pledge their credit and 
past accumulations for the payment 
of them. It is no wonder that nine- 
ty per cent of the merchants tail. 
But the surplus which begins to heap 
on the merchants shelves or to ap- 
pear as insolvent accounts on his 
books, move back towards the shops, 
mines and fields, carrying stagna- 
tion and lower wages and prices and 
idleness there, and breeding at 
length, in periods every few years, 
panics and waves of bankruptcy, 
which every time are more severe. In 
every civilized nation, this surplus is 
the thing that turns the hair of the 
rulers gray, as they try to find coun- 
tries in the world, where their clam- 
oring, insistent capitalists, can sell 
it for cash or land, mines or forests. 

During the last few decades the 
civilized world has suffered from sev- 
eral of these severe panics, but we 
are now facing the most awful mani- 
festation of panic and plethora, that 
ever the universe has witnessed. In 
Germany, where productive methods 
had become supremely efficient, the 
workers were producing commodities 
five, ten or more times, faster than 
they could buy them back, with their 
wages, and the rulers of Germany 
were desperately resolved to find some 
country or countries, where the peo- 
ple not being so civilized, had no 
surplus and could buy the German 
surplus, which contained the profits 
of the German capitalists. Such 
countries there were in Africa, South 



America, Asia and the islands of the 
sea, that is countries which could 
absorb some of the surplus, until 
they themselves began to grow civil- 
ized and create their own surplus, 
as Japan has done within a few de- 
cades. But France, England and the 
United States also had their own en- 
ormous surplus worrying their? rulers, 
and France and England at least 
stood between Germany and the mon- 
opoly she wished in the trade of 
those less developed countries. 

Thus the greatest war in all his- 
tory has arisen because the capital- 
ists interfere in the natural and free 
exchange of commodities, between the 
producers of them, taking out on both 
sides a portion of the cash equiv- 
alent of values, in the name of rents, 
interest and profits, and leaving 
thereon, a certain and equal amount 
of commodities in the channels of 
exchange, for which the cash equiv- 
alent, which could alone permit them 
to be exchanged, has been withdrawn 
and hoarded by them. Thus, here in 
America there is a hundred times 
enough ready cash lying in the bank 
vaults and treasuries, subject to the 
demand of the capitalists to buy all 
your cotton at twenty cents a pound, 
to say nothing of six. But the peo- 
ple, who own that money do not wear 
cotton goods, do not use them in, 
their homes. And the people, who 
dc, use them, have not the money to 
buy them, and if they attempted to 
get the money with wihch to buy cot- 
ton goods, a great many of you, 



would do all you could to keep them 
from getting it, having the idea, that 
big capitalists create prosperity. Out 
in Colorado, for many long, weary 
months, a strike of coal miners and 
a bloody civil war has been going on. 
If the miners win there will be more 
money to buy cotton goods, and the 
price of raw cotton will rise. If the 
owners win, there will be less money 
to buy cotton goods, and the price of 
raw cotton will fall. 

The United States troops are there 
now, trying to help the mine owners 
beat down wages, and you voted for 
the party, sent back the congressmen 
and senators to Washington, by whose 
influence, that army is kept there. 
You also pay for keeping that army 
there, and do not teach your sons to 
stay out of it, as long as it is being 
ased to keep working men from im- 
proving their conditions of life. 

To day in every township and beat 
of the cotton states, the people are 
trying to organize themselves in some 
form to meet th situation. It is a 
striking good time to try to 
do this, because the wrongs of the 
farmers are now stinking in the nos- 
trials of heaven. 

But even if the war should pass, 
before a successful form of organi- 
zation can be developed, the lovers of 
freedom should not cease trying to 
organize the cotton farmers, because 
the need of organization and struggle 
will not pass with this war. 

The farmers c?n not organize or at 
least they can not maintain an or- 



ganization upon the close, disciplined 
lines of a labor union, because their 
interests pull them too strongly away 
from each other for that sort of un- 
ion. Their successful union, if it 
ever comes will be upon totally new 
lines, taking into account the fact 
that the farmer's environment is in- 
dividualistic. 

For one thing the farmers have 
voting power, which only about twen- 
ty per cent of the workers in the ma- 
chine industries have. They ought 
to organize politically, and wholly 
free from any capitalist party. But 
they ought not to sit down and 
trust wholly to parties, voting, poli- 
tics and lawmaking, There is a waj 
by which they can bring political pow- 
er into motion every day. It is this 
way. Every time the workers or- 
ganize and strike against the cor- 
porations back them up with all your 
sympathy and material, immediate 
support. 

Do you thing that any leading poli- 
tician among Democrats, Republicans 
or Progressives would dare to speak 
or write in the root searching, hum- 
bug withering style of this little book 
No, if you live forever, you will never 
see one of them brave enough to do 
it. If you are going to vote, you 
must vote for politicians who will 
have the nerve to get up <in the face 
of the world and proclaim as cl3arly 
as this book does, the principles it 
sets forth. 

But when you elect, even these poli- 
ticians to make your laws, do not 



sit down and leave things to them, 
until next election time. The very best 
men in the world, even if you and I 
are among them, as soon as they are 
elected to offices, which they like, 
are tempted to BECOME PUBLIC 
ENEMIES AND WILL BECOME 
PUBLIC ENEMIES IF YOU TRUST 
THINGS ENTIRELY TO THEM. Sim- 
ply because they become more intent 
upon holding their jobs, than upon 
serving you well. Elect them, and 
then keep raising Cain behind them, 
seizing new ground from your ene- 
mies, which your lawmakers will have 
to acknowledge by properly enacted 
statutes. A law never declares a 
thing to be right, until somebody has 
done it so mightily that it can not 
be undone. Now when the labor un- 
ions line up to strike against the 
big corporations, REMEMBER THEY 
ARE DOING NOTHING IN THE 
WORLD, BUT TRYING TO GET 
MORE MONEY TO BUY YOUR COT- 
TON PRODUCTS, YOUR FARM 
TRUCK, AND TO SPEND WITH 
YOUR RETAIL MERCHANTS FOR 
THE THINGS WHICH LABOR CRE- 
ATES. They are striking powerful 
blows for prosperity. 

Give them your unstinted sympathy 
and your abundant material support, 
and let your frowns and displeasure 
wither whoever stands against them. 
Your courts ought to let a receiver 
take charge of every corporate in- 
dustry, which comes to a standstill, 
because its owners will not pay the 
wages demanded by striking work- 



e:*s, and this receiver should operate 
the industry, just as the company 
does, and pay the workers the 
demanded rate of wages, as long as 
the revenue of the business, less the 
upkeep expense of the plant and ma- 
terial would allow it, without any re- 
gard to profit and dividends, as 
these are no concern of yours. Speak 
so loudly and clearly that the world 
may have no doubt of your meaning, 
and your voice can only be heard in 
the books, papers and pamphlets, like 
this, which you freely circulate, read 
and cause to be read. 

With the political organization, 
which you of the middle class can 
control, and the technical and indus- 
trial organization, which the workers 
are already able to perfect, the cor- 
poration monopolists can be eliminat- 
ed from the control of our industries, 
with no serious shock to production, 
but to the contrary, upon a con- 
stantly rising tide of prosperity, to 
all the workers and all the middle 
class. 

The Southern Railway System cov- 
ers all of the Southeast with a web 
of roads, spreading thousands of 
miles every way, and employing 
many thousands of worekrs. Who 
are the owners of this system, and 
what have they to do with giving the 
public railroad service? 

The New York Stock Exchange re- 
ports will convince you, that this 
vast system, like all other great cor- 
porate properties, is never owned by 
the same men, for as much as two 



whole hours together. Every hour, 
every few minutes, by the sale of 
shares of stock, the ownership of the 
corporations, are changing in the ex- 
changes and on the curbs. But the 
railroad service or the corporate in- 
dustry, coal mine, steel plant or cot- 
ton mill goes on just the same, nev- 
er knowing that its owners are 
changing every few minutes, few of 
them even knowing where their pro- 
perty is located. Hired men, all the 
way from President down to section 
snipe, operate the railroad, just as 
other hired men, operate the other 
corporate industries. When a cor- 
poration is wrecked, the court takes 
it in charge, tells 1 the owners to step 
aside, for they are not needed, but 
it keeps the same workers right on 
the job, for nothing can be done with- 
out them. When under the protection 
of the court, which does nothing but 
to make the owners keep out of the 
way, the workers have re-created the 
business, the court then turns it 
back to the owners, who have thus 
been proven, to be worse than use- 
less. The corporations which are the 
organic divisions or units of our in- 
dustrial system, already afford us 
the framework, upon which we can 
build, by Jthe aid of court receiver- 
ships, a workers industrial common- 
wealth, simply by keeping all of the 
hired men, the official staff and all 
the workers skilled and unskilled in 
their present places, and recogniz- 
ing their right to distribute among 
themselves the vhole income of the 






industry, after the upkeep is provid- 
ed. For there is FIFTY CENTS IN 
EVERY POUND OF YOUR COTTON 
THESE WORKERS ARE PAYING 
THAT, AS FAR AS THEY ARE AL- 
LOWED WAGES, BUT THE CPITA- 
LISTS, AND NOT YOU, ARE GET- 
TING IT. 

VII. 

You are advised to reduce your 
cotton acreage, as a means of rais- 
ing the price. To let your competi- 
tor in cotton raising reduce his out- 
put, and in that way to raise the 
price of your own cotton, without 
.making less of it, would be better. 

One great reason, why cotton is so 

plentiful and cheap, is that on the 

great plantations of Middle Georgia, 

Middle Alabama, Mississippi and 

.other of the richest regions of the 

south, it is grown by negroes who 

get for their labor, only enough to 

-maintain a bare, brute susbsistence. 

They are reduced to practical peonage 

by the labor laws, which the various 

states have enacted against immi- 

grent agents, who might help them to 

other countries, and for the enforce- 

, ment of contracts of labor, which the 

negroes are compelled to make, or 

. are supposed to have made, whether 

or not. 

They are also intimidated by the 
sentiment, which is kept alive among 
you against them, and which costs 
you and your children more than it 
does them. The few, rich, non-resi- 
dent Plantation Aristocrats, who 



get the benefit of this cheap, this 
mule cheap negro labor, against 
which you are pitting your wives and 
children in the cotton fields, are not 
and never would be able to intimi- 
date these negroes by them- 
selves. The negroes, work 
year after year, making cotton 
to make yours cheaper, and never 
daring to ask for a settlement in 
many cases, because you make them 
afraid. You will take sides against 
them in favor of the Plantation Aris- 
tocrats in the courts, elections and 
everywhere else. Let a voice go up 
from every cotton field in the south, 
that white women and children are 
no longer to be worked against ne- 
groes who are reduced to the mule 
level for the benefit of non-resident 
plantation owners, living in New Or- 
leans, Boston, Natchez, Macon, Eu- 
rope, and everywhere except where 
they have to hold a plow handle. 
Let the negroes have their natural 
freedom to labor upon such terms as 
they see fit. Give them also their 
freedom to emigrate to other lands. 
They could be cheaply colonized in 
the rich Orinoco Valley in northern 
South America, which lies at our 
doors, near the path to the Panama 
Canal, and they would have been col- 
onized long ago, except for the peo- 
ple who want them to work, cheaper 
than you and your children can af- 
ford it. 

Make them free and give them their 
freedom to emigrate, ,even as the 
children of Israel went out of Egypt 



to a land oi their own. 

The plantations upon which thcze 
negroes grow cotton for mnle pay 03- 
cupy immense sections in various 
parts of the south, and of the most 
desirable lands in the United States 
for occupation by white workers. But 
white workers are not wanted there, 
and the land is held at prices far 
out of their reach. Though their an- 
cestors fought Indians and the pow- 
ers of Europe to win these lands, 
yet, they are more completely shut 
out from them, than they were when 
the red savages rambled from the 
Santee to the Brazos. 

Besides cotton the most plentiful 
crop grown on southern farms is 
children. But their fathers have no 
homes to leave to them. 

Cheap lands for you and your chil- 
dren to occupy, and high prices for 
your labor and its products — this is 
your true policy. 

Take the yoke off the Black Belt 
negro peons. Join hands with the 
city wage workers. Join hands with 
such organizations of farm workers as 
the Renter's Unions of Texas and 
Oklahoma, who are trying to make 
lands cheap and labor products high, 
in order that the people may have 
homes and comforts in them. Make 
things hum, and keep them humming, 
and victory shall rest with you and 
King Cotton. 

C. D. RIVERS. 



ss 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



027 293 717 5 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



027 293 717 5 



